FDA (U18) GRANT PROPOSAL FOR FOA # RFA-FD-17-010 Abstract/Summary This grant proposal from the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) is in response to Funding Opportunity Announcement # RFA-FD-17-010 from the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) and Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). Its purpose is to advance our nation's food safety system through enhancement of state food laboratory activities. The goal is to create a National Integrated Food Safety System and support the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. This application covers Competition A and B. The Competition A Application addresses the following three areas: 1. Ensure that chemical and microbiological food analyses performed for the state manufactured food regulatory program is conducted according to ISO 17025 standards; 2. Strengthen the collaboration between our laboratory and the state food regulatory program, and; 3. Increase the number of state surveillance samples collected and analyzed annually. The Competition B Application addresses the following three areas: 1. Strengthening the collaboration between the laboratories and State manufactured food regulatory programs; 2. Increasing the number of State samples collected and analyzed for surveillance purposes annually; and 3. Developing a stronger international rapid surveillance system for pathogen trace back through the GenomeTrackr network using a minimum set of metadata fields for all food and environmental isolates. ODA's Laboratories Quality Management Practices (ISO 17025 accredited) provide a high level of confidence in the reliability of results for all existing programs. The laboratory has a proven ability to perform large numbers of chemical and microbiological analyses with excellent turn- around-time for reporting results. The ODA has a history of active participation in national food safety surveillance programs and in the investigation of significant chemical and microbiological emergencies in the US. The ODA laboratories have an excellent inventory of relevant instruments and equipment that could also be utilized during food emergency conditions or in the case of large scale testing needs.